Gymnastics's Unlikely Bronx Tale

With Grace and Grit, John Orozco Looks to Bring Olympic Gold Back to His Family and the Borough

By

Aimee Berg

Updated Feb. 29, 2012 10:35 p.m. ET

At 13, when John Orozco took a job bagging groceries at a Bronx bodega, he thought, "I'm gonna help us get out of here." But tips weren't the ticket.

Talent was.

Initially, it manifested as fearlessness. He would hang from the basketball rim in the yard at age 1. He would jump off the roof into his father's arms at 18 months.

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John Orozco works the rings apparatus at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championship last October in Tokyo.
Getty Images

It later appeared in his ease of movement: in taekwondo, capoeira and dance.

Now courage and grace define his gymnastics style, and Orozco is poised to lead the U.S. men's team at the London Olympics this summer. "He just makes things look light and easy," said his coach, Vitaly Marinitch. "It's a combination of strength and air sense."

This Saturday, Orozco will headline the American Cup, an elite invitational at Madison Square Garden. His credentials include a fifth-place performance in the men's all-around at the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo—less than six-tenths of a point short of a medal. He also helped the U.S. capture bronze in the men's team event. And Orozco was only 18.

Growing up in the Bronx, it wasn't easy to be a gymnast, although the borough had produced Ed Scrobe, a 1948 and 1952 Olympian who represented the D.A. Turn Verein club, a descendant of a German gymnastics organization founded in New York in 1850 that produced several Olympians in the early 1900s. But Orozco lived with four older siblings, a cousin and two dogs in his Puerto Rican parents' home in Clason Point. Money was tight. His father, Will, was a city sanitation supervisor. His mother, Damaris, was a substitute teacher.

Not long after his father saw a flyer on a Manhattan lamp post advertising free gymnastics lessons in Cooper Square, Orozco transferred to World Cup Gymnastics in Chappaqua for advanced training, which meant taking the family's grey Honda 45 minutes (several times a day) to the upscale community that the Clintons call home.

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He competes on the high bar earlier this month in Florida.
Associated Press

The taunts ranged from "wearing leotards is stupid" to homophobic slurs, but Orozco ignored them. He was too busy rapidly acquiring skills by watching and staying humble.

In one of his first competitions, an older boy was being teased about a low score and started crying. After Orozco received his award, he quietly walked over and placed his medal over the boy's head.

"Initially, we were like: Oh no! He just gave away his first gold medal!" his mother said. "You know how parents like to keep everything. But really, there's nothing better than that."

As a high school freshman, Orozco narrowed his focus. "I thought: I have to start making this [Olympic] dream a reality by setting it as a goal."

He started working twice as hard at the gym. Almost immediately, he improved. But success wasn't straightforward.

At his junior national championship debut in 2007, in San Jose, Calif., his mother's phone rang after the first day of competition. John's father had been paralyzed on his left side and had suffered a potentially lethal carotid artery dissection that could have led to a stroke.

"I was freaking out," he said. "I wanted to come home early, but he told me—with a lisp because his tongue was numb—to finish the competition."

Orozco, who was 14 at the time, went on to win the junior all-around title and claimed five apparatus medals, including three golds.

"I couldn't think of anything but coming home," he said. "The plane ride felt like forever."

His father eventually regained mobility, but according to Damaris, the disability cost him part of his pension after 19½ years with the sanitation department.

To ease the financial burden, World Cup Gymnastics waived its fees and Orozco went on to win three consecutive junior national titles. Sports Illustrated featured him among its "16 Stars of Tomorrow."

Then, in his senior national debut in 2010, Orozco competed well through four rotations. On his fifth, the vault, he attempted a Yurchenko double-full, meaning a round-off back handspring onto the table, and a flip with two twists in the air.

He hadn't nailed it in warm-ups and when it came time to perform his relatively new trick, he said, "I had a bit of doubt on the runway."

In his hesitance, he under-rotated and fell forward on landing. The pain was immediate. He had torn 90 percent of his right Achilles tendon.

After two months in a cast and two more in a boot, Orozco moved to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in December 2010 to work with Marinitch, who had been a Soviet gold medalist in the 1989 world championship team event.

Under Marinitch's guidance, Orozco claimed bronze at the 2011 U.S. Nationals (where he earned the same second-day score as the winner Danell Leyva in a format where the highest two-day total determined the winner), and had his breakout performance at the Worlds two months later in Japan.

(His parents made it to Japan thanks to a benefactor whose daughter had attended one of the parties Orozco had hosted at the gym.)

In early February, Orozco also won the Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas—by a wide 5.5-point margin.

On Saturday, he will be tested by Leyva along with three European men who placed in the top-eight at worlds. It will be only the second time Orozco has ever set foot inside the Garden, but he's not nervous.

"He's realizing that he's No. 1 right now," Marinitch said.

Despite being 19, Ororzco has proven he can perform well under pressure. In the team format at worlds, a country may only enter three gymnasts per apparatus and all three athletes' scores count. Orozco contributed solid results in all four of his rotations in his first world championship of any kind.

At team camps, U.S. gymnasts call him "SNinja"— "Ninja" because he's so quick, and "S" for secret weapon.

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